The store was in the middle of a block. The patrolman was at the corner going farther away. Everything was exactly right. A passing electric car swallowed the noise of the breaking glass. Sanc disengaged the hammer’s nose from the hole carefully with a rasping noise. The hammer went into his coat pocket, and the wire came from beneath his coat. The top of the pedestal where the ruby rested was higher than the hole in the window, and when Sanc lifted the ring on his wire it slid slowly down and out into his hand. He threw the wire into the street and walked away. I followed behind and overtook him at the corner. A few blocks farther away he tossed the hammer into a lot. We sat apart on the train to the ferry and on the boat across to the city.

In my room Sanc removed the ruby from its setting, which I immediately took out and threw into a nearby sewer opening. When I returned he was admiring the stone. “There’s a stone, kid, that, as Shakespeare says, ‘A Jew would kiss and an Infidel adore.’ ”